I absolutely HATE the seeding of the Big Ten Tournament this year, am I alone?
First of all you have "day 1" of the tournament where the only games are the 4 worst teams going against each other. What's the point of that? Who's going to watch or attend Northwestern vs Penn State in Chicago? It's completely pointless.
Most standard 14-team brackets have the 1 and 2 seeds getting a first round bye and then all other teams battling it out on the first day. That's one epic day of basketball. I would have to call in sick for that.
The only thing that makes sense is that they don't think they can squeeze 6 basketball games into the same day...and I guess I get that...but still "day 1" of the BTT is a complete joke.
either way its the same number of tourney games and days. Since you can not play 6 games in 1 day at 1 arena, a single bye tourney like you are proposing would need the 6 round1 games to be played over 2 days, wed and thurs. You would probably have the 8 vs. 9 and 7 vs. 10 games on wed since the winners would play 1 and 2 seeds on friday. Then have 3 vs. 14, 4 vs. 13, 5 vs. 12, and 6 vs. 11 on thurs and the winners play each other on friday.
but under this format, you are forcing the 7 thru 10 seeds to show up 1 day early then the winners sit around for 1 day.
if you go with the format chosen, you make the 11 vs. 14 seeds show up on wed, and odds are they wont make it to sat or sunday, bu if they do, they will have to win 5 days in a row.
meanwhile the top 4 seeds don't have to show up until friday, which is good because they have best chance to make it to the sunday CCG.
So I like the format they chose. Yes, nobody will show up for wed games, but nobody wants to go 5 days in row anyway.